My Reasons
by Lucillia
Summary: An Obito who's grown tired of listening to the guards rehash their opinions of exactly what was wrong with him as he awaits his trial goes back over his reasons for having joined Madara in the first place.


Obito shook his head as he moved to the back of his cell. He really should've died on the field of battle. If he had, he would've been dead when his victorious enemies had started to dissect his "true motives" for why he'd joined Madara and done what he had done, and he wouldn't have to deal with _this..._

"Sick bastard." the guard on the left said, not bothering to disguise the glare behind the mask as he leaned against the wall staring into the cell as he had since the beginning of his shift.

"I can't wait until they get the trial over with so he'll be in hell where he belongs. Did you hear about what he wanted to do to that Rin girl?" the guard on the right who'd just relieved another guard said.

He'd heard dozens of iterations of this since he'd arrived in this cell which he so far hadn't managed to escape from, the loss of his eyes having made such things more difficult than usual.

He knew that on at least one level what he had wanted to do was sick, but then again had Madara made the same offer he had to him to any other man so soon after they had watched the person they were closest to, the person they loved, murdered right before their very eyes, there was at least a 70/30 chance that that man would have at least initially gone along with Madara's plans in order to get his loved one back until they reached a point where what they were being asked to do became "too much" or "not worth it" or "[insert name here] wouldn't have wanted this". Give the offer to someone who'd been trained to kill practically since birth, and there would be at least a two in ten chance that the man would go out and kill who he needed to in order to remake the world, even if it meant killing one's own comrades in arms. Make them young enough to still be malleable and catch them while they were at their worst, after having earned their trust over a period of time after a traumatic event that was just the latest in a string of traumatic events as you nurse them back to health, and the number jumps to more than half.

For some strange reason, none of the people he'd dealt with since he and Madara had lost the war and he'd been sent here to await some show trial that would bring everyone "closure" could see how Madara could've earned his unwavering loyalty until the end when Madara had proven to be too mad even for him, even though the man would have won their hero Naruto's loyalty in the same situation. The answer was staring them in the face, had been staring them in the face for centuries, come to think of it if that old story about that boy who'd joined an enemy of the Sage of the Six paths and the thousands of stories that were just like it were true, but they all refused to look. Instead, they commented on how pathetic he was because he'd followed Madara "because Rin died, and he wanted her back", and that he was sick for wanting to "be with" Rin.

Of course, no matter how many times someone tells a ninja to look "Underneath the underneath" they never bother. If he'd wanted _that_, he could quite easily have forced a prostitute or even a young girl to look like Rin and had his way with her. Considering the fact that there was a distinct lack of women in the Red Light districts across the continent commenting on his proclivities and a distinct lack of traumatized young girls screaming rape and bringing his name into it, you'd think they would've realized...

The reason he had wanted Rin back wasn't sexual, nor was it wholly about Rin. It was about what Rin _represented_. His love for Rin was bound up with his love for home, and that last shred of naivete that he'd possessed before the last of his innocence was stripped from him and he was forced to face the reality of exactly how cold and cruel the world he lived in was. Considering the fact that he'd ended up seeing the world for what it was for the first time so soon after he'd watched one of his comrades slaughter his first love, it wasn't surprising that he had mistaken it for Hell.

All those people who sneered at him for turning against his sensei and his comrades and trying to destroy his village never understood. In those dark days while he'd been recovering, _Rin was Konoha and Konoha was Rin_. Rin had been the first thing he'd thought of when he'd thought of anything positive back home, and the last. It was her kind smile he remembered rather than the taunts of his relatives to whom he was a disappointment, it was her gentle encouragement he remembered rather than Kakashi's snide remarks or the fact that Minato-sensei would turn his attention to Kakashi first and the most out of a habit which was a holdover from the days when Kakashi had been his only student, it was her empathy he remembered, rather the death of one of the old people whose groceries he used to carry home. Rin was so present and so pervasive in every last memory of Konoha that he'd called to mind, that it was impossible to imagine a Konoha without Rin.

When Rin had died by the hand of the person who'd sworn to protect her with his life, the teammate he'd thought had finally _seen _him in the end, Konoha had also died in his heart, and his Will of Fire had burned out. In those moments when he was standing under the moon, the dead bodies of the enemies that had been chasing Rin and the teammate he'd once thought might not have been a jerk after-all when he'd abandoned his mission in order to save his comrade just as his father had done surrounding him, all of the pain and the doubts that he'd been pushing out of his mind while he focused on getting well enough to return "home" came flooding back.

In his head, he knew that his team hadn't deliberately abandoned him, that Minato-sensei hadn't left him to die, but in his heart it was a different story. In his heart, the fact that his sensei had left him and hadn't even bothered to come back even for his mortal remains had been confirmation that everything his sensei had been telling him about camaraderie, and how teammates didn't leave each-other behind, and the Will of Fire itself was utter bullshit. If his sensei had been there, Kakashi wouldn't have had to kill Rin in order to keep the enemy from getting their hands on her.

Their team had broken, and broken again, and Minato hadn't come until it was far too late either time. Hadn't come at all the second time when he'd left Kakashi lying there unconscious because he'd frankly forgot about the other boy in his distress over what had happened to Rin in fact...

Nobody cared about that however, all they cared about was the fact that he'd tried to break the world for a girl and he lost. They didn't even care why, preferring to pull themselves into a comfortable little shell in which he was just a poor and pathetic being who was only sick and insane, rather than see that under the right set of circumstances, any one of them could have been standing on the head of the Jyuubi at Madara's side.

Kakashi for instance, Kakashi who'd found his father's dead body after the man had committed suicide because he'd been reviled for doing the right thing. Kakashi whose teammate "died" saving his life, whose teammate had thrown him out of the way of a boulder, fully believing in that moment that he would die when the boulder hit him instead. Kakashi who'd found himself backed into a corner where he was forced to kill the very person he'd sworn to protect. Whisper the right words in his ear, show him how the villagers of Konoha still had bad things to say about him and his father, stick him in another situation where Minato-sensei yet again failed to turn up soon enough to save one of the few people he actually cared about, and...

Even Minato-sensei himself could've joined Madara with the right motivation. That motivation had been standing right by his side being the only bit of family he had aside from his "comrades" and "teammates", and had he told her the real reason for Konoha's lackluster performance when it came to coming to the aid of Uzu before it fell...

Come to think of it, he probably should've told her before the end. Told her how Danzo was a paranoid bastard who'd undermined the Sandaime at every turn practically since day one, and how Uzu was yet another one of his crimes, just like what had happened to Pein's little friend.

Things certainly would've been interesting if he had...


End file.
